Anybody make shingles?

I've hand split shingles with a home made "froe" before just to see if I could do it. I shingled the north face of a room I added on to our old place. It's been well over 20 years and those things are still in good shape!

I wouldn't mind shingling the walls of our house if I could make the shingles. A pretty big task to hand split that many though. We have quite a bit of red cedar that is very good for shingles. Red cedar doesn't split as straight and will be better sawed. Ash ought to make good shingles since it splits so straight. I can split them on my hydraulic splitter, I've triued it and it works pretty good.

I know one fellow that has an old shingle mill but he won't part with it.

“I've hand split shingles with a home made "froe" before just to see if I could do it. I shingled the north face of a room I added on to our old place. It's been well over 20 years and those things are still in good shape!

I wouldn't mind shingling the walls of our house if I could make the shingles. A pretty big task to hand split that many though. We have quite a bit of red cedar that is very good for shingles. Red cedar doesn't split as straight and will be better sawed. Ash ought to make good shingles since it splits so straight. I can split them on my hydraulic splitter, I've triued it and it works pretty good.

I know one fellow that has an old shingle mill but he won't part with it.

I don't thing Ash would be very good as it rots pretty fast if left out in weather.You might be able to use it if you can seal it somehow though.

Woodmizer has a good set up for making shingles, and lap siding, but I couldn't justify the cost (about a grand, last time I checked), so I made my own out of plywood, used a couple of pieces of all-thread, and a couple of nuts, whipped it up in a couple of hours, not as fast as doing 4 or 6 blocks at a time, but I don't need lots, most of the ones I cut are out of short pieces of wood layin around the mill.

you can make untapered shingles..cut a square cant, every 16 inches or however log you want them, notch the cant with a chainsaw down a couple inches from the bed..then saw them as thick as you want..1/4 inch or so.

split shingles will last longer..I guess the cut opens up the cells in the wood and lets them rot quicker...there are 100+ year old
split wood shake roofs out there...you can see the stars through them but it'll rain for five minutes and the swell shut..

swamp cedar makes great shingles...i might have to play with making some out of cypress.

“hey dave, sounds like you whipped up a good shingle jig there. got any pix or more details on it? like you said, the shingle attachments pricey if you ain't goin' for production.

What I did for the shingle jig was to take 2 pieces pf plywood, long enough to span 2 rails on the mill bed, the bottom piece of plywood got framed by 2 rails of scrap poplar, along the length of it. Rails are about 3 inches tall, screwed, glued to the plywood. Top half of the jig has a slight lip along the back side to counteract the force of the blade moving into the cut. You clamp the block to this lip. The top half also has 2 end caps, that fit between the rails of the bottom half. Also not mentioned before, the bottom rails are drilled at each end for a piece of all- thread. At each corner, there are 4 nuts arranged as follows, on the all thread: One nut is welded to another nut, side to side, kinda looks like the number 8, and is sandwiched between the other 2 nuts. At the outside of the rails, toward the right side of the mill, as seen from the operators position, the all thread protrudes enough to have 2 more nuts jammed together. These nuts rotate the entire piece of all thread like a cam, so that the way this contraption works, is to place a block on top, clamp, set cam to up position, make a cut, set cam down, lower blade, make a cut. There you have just made 2 shingles, repeat ad nauseum!